One-legged wonder Part II

-- Turning the perfect circle

Turns out there’s much more to one-legged cycling drills than just, well, one leg.

Frequent Lunn Ave Blog contributor and Doctor of Bicycle Engineering Mike P mulls a visual display of "the continuous vector" and secrets of the auto brain.

He writes:

Getting more performance mainly comes back to Lance's advice, as one has only so much time. Those who prefer to put a lot of that time into the peripherals look most intimidating on the start line, but that doesn't win. Somewhere in between is getting it right, with pedalling technique the core.

My thoughts therefore are that power can be wasted by way of inaccurate or relatively basically coordinated pedalling technique, and that pedalling in circles can occasionally be exactly right by chance, but mainly not.

So while swimmers pedantically break down every movement, and separately coach and practice, cyclists are somewhat opposite. They just ride the fucking bike. The same approach in swimming would not produce too many Olympians.

I have an objective of getting an electronic display of "the continuous vector". From there components could be seen, and then worked on, but working on that is another area with a whole lot of room for development.

But in the meantime, one-legged pedalling provides a rudimentary guide, and an equally rudimentary solution. I think the whole cycle industry has not taken pedalling technique development very far.

I am trying to use the coordination required in balancing to drive an additional level correctness to my technique, but even that is still rather approximate and hopeful.

Another approach you may be able to use on your wind-trainer is to do very slow one-legged training against a very high resistance that has no momentum for carry-over. If you could get it right while very slow, then do it over and over and over, you could commit it to the same control area of your brain that deals with heartbeat, breathing and balance. Once there, all you need to do is slowly, like very slowly, speed it up, with sleeps between.

The Segway evaluates gyroscopic forces 100 times per sec. I think the auto-brain is doing something similar, especially where the balance is exceptional. Correct pedalling requires the same continuous level of brain activity, maybe more, to drive two legs individually and correctly, at 110rpm. But I think it can be done. Put it this way, pedalling at 110 rpm is done now, but just not necessarily correctly all the way round, or in enough correctly realigned increments.

So... I think now is the time for you to be my Guinea-pig Rich. That shoulder may be what God just done to us so we can get closer to 100% correct power delivery, or put another way, do a whole lot more miles on the same gallon.